Tag Archives: New Year’s

As I said in the previous post, today I will be writing about my plans and goals for 2015. This is a post I’ve been looking forward to write since the beginning of this month, as I have some really cool things planned and I just want to share them with everyone who reads this blog.

So here are my plans for next year:

#1: Write (and submit to traditional markets) one short story a week every week

That’s right. I am going to do what hundreds of other writers have done before me and take up the “one short story a week” challenge.

I have a few reasons for doing this: First, it will make me a little bit of extra cash, cash that could help fund my indie publishing efforts; second, it will act as advertising for my indie books; and third, it will give me more practice writing short fiction, which I feel is an area I am weak in.

I will still be indie publishing my novels, don’t worry, but my short fiction will likely not see an indie release immediately. I will only publish my short fiction if I fail to sell it or once the rights revert back to me from the market I sell it to.

I think this challenge will be GREAT fun. I will probably rack up an impressive list of rejections, just like most writers, but if I can sell even one short story, it will all be worth it.

#2: Create a new website

I’ve had this WordPress.com website for a year and a half now, I believe, but now I think it is time I moved onto a self-hosted WordPress.org website.

Don’t get me wrong. I like WordPress.com a lot, but it doesn’t offer as many options as a self-hosted WordPress site does. I feel limited in my choices and options here (for example, I can’t include a sign-up form on any of my pages for my newsletter, which is a BIG problem, in my opinion).

This new website will probably launch in January. I am still in the process of designing it and learning about everything I can do with it, but I am hoping to have it online by January 1st. I am also going to make sure that I move all of my followers on this blog to the new one.

With a smooth workflow set up, I think 2015 will be the Year of Tons of Books for me. I have several series planned, not counting the 52 short stories I will be writing as part of the “one short story a week” challenge I will be undertaking.

Here’s a glimpse of what I have planned for next year:

-The Prince Malock World Omnibus
-My 2014 NaNoWrimo novel, The Last Legend: Glitch Apocalypse, plus the four short stories I wrote to go along with it, will be published in ebook and trade paperback in January
-A sequel series to the Prince Malock World, currently titled Mages of Martir, with the first book slated for release in early 2015
-A series of humorous science-fiction short stories
-A science-fiction trilogy
-A science-fantasy series
-A mystery novel about an ex-superhero detective

As you can no doubt tell, I have A LOT of product to start writing next year. Whether I will actually finish it all and get it published in 2015, I don’t know, but I will certainly try my best.

Also, the Prince Malock World novella series is canceled for now. I wrote a couple of them, but they didn’t feel right to me, so for now I am putting this subseries on the backburner. It will instead be replaced by the Mages of Martir series I mentioned above, which will be a series of four (possibly five) novels taking place thirty years after the end of the last Prince Malock book. Stay tuned for that.

I will be talking more about these books and other projects as the year progresses.

#4: Promotion

Promotion is a difficult topic among indie writers. Some will create huge elaborate social media campaigns for their book, while others will rely solely on word of mouth to get the sales going. There’s a lot of disagreement about how much promotion a writer should do, although no one disputes that you have to do some promotion in order to bring your books to the attention of potential readers.

Myself, I have not been doing much promotion (outside of this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and the newsletter) because I have been researching all of the various kinds of promotional techniques other indies use to bump up their sales numbers. I want to make sure I pick the right promotional techniques that give me the best return on investment without wasting precious time that could be better spent writing the next novel.

Next year, I will be doing more promotion than I did this year. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I have a few promotional ideas I’d like to try out next year, which I hope will work really well. Only time will tell, I suppose.

#5: Audiobooks

With the rapid growth in the audiobook market over the last few years, I’d be a fool to ignore this source of possible revenue.

Therefore, next year I will work on getting the Prince Malock novels into audio, followed by the rest of my novels shortly thereafter. I will probably use Audible to do it.

Besides, I already have electronic and paper covered. Audio is the next frontier for my indie publishing adventure, one I will conquer just as I have conquered the others.

So those are my plans for next year. I suppose you could think of them as New Year’s Resolutions, but honestly I don’t really like that term because a New Year’s Resolution, to me, is something you swear you will do in December of the last year and then forget about it by January of the next year. All of these will be ongoing challenges that I won’t be able to complete in a week or a month. I guess you could still call them Resolutions if you want, but I won’t, so there 😛 .

And I am very, very much excited for all of them. I think 2015 will be a great year if I achieve even half of what I hope to accomplish.